One of the worst films of the year.

Rating: 2/10 (22 July 2005)

This "film" is full of non-stop product placements. The "action" scenes consist of a close up shot of, who knows what, with the camera shaking relentlessly.
I must give Bay credit however, because it is obvious that he basically made up the whole movie himself as he went along. His visual style is incredible, if only he would stop cutting every millisecond. The cinematography, especially of Scarlett Johannsen is unbelievable. She looks candy-colored. The contrast of the film every time she is shown is amazing, and the natural lighting is a breath of fresh air. We can see shadows on their faces!
There is no chance in hell there was ever a full script for this version of the movie. It seems as if Steve Buschemi's lines were the only ones that they bothered to write down on paper and the rest they made up. The pacing of the film is atrocious. Compare this to even the mediocre film "Minority Report." At least that film got the viewer into the story with a great opening sequence. The only decent thing about this film is the pro-life and nature vs. nurture messages it forces you to think about in between boring scenes. Also, the white suits shot from above remind me of sperm, and many of the clones are shown in embryo like sacks, violently being cut upon. Much like abortion. The character "motivations" are absolutely laughable.
Michael Bay should be ashamed at the way he uses black people in this film. In the extremely unfunny first act, black women and men are used to make "funny" sassy sarcastic jokes. After having a black villain, played by Djimon Hundsou chase down the two leads with black helicopters, fire at them with machine guns relentlessly, and lead groups of men in the process of destroying the city of los angeles, he suddenly becomes a "good" guy. He turns against his employers and decides to help liberate the clones.
There is a character who seems to be an overacting Canadian actor hamming it up. He seems to be comic relief, but we all sat through his scenes stone faced. There is one scene where he enters a gas chamber, and panics. Needless to say, it was the best part of the movie. This character IS the movie. When you see him, you understand the tone and the mental age of the script. I remember being 10 years old. This movie was made for eight year olds.
Overall, this film is a perfect example of how Hollywood can throw in a bunch of computer graphics and a horrible script and still wonder why they are losing money.